


beyond my reach, but calling still

by SetsunaDrive



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 10:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13634304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SetsunaDrive/pseuds/SetsunaDrive
Summary: Why was his son condemned to suffer? A pawn, a prize, a sacrifice - a casualty of the bigger picture that he would never grow to see. Yet, the Gods lie silent. Absent from their prideful thrones as Regis drags himself along a path they had prophesied to end in a cloak of darkness, glass in his palms as he reaches for each unrelenting new day.Without the Prince, the King from unravels before the eyes of his Shield.





	beyond my reach, but calling still

After 5 weeks, Clarus was no stranger to the scene that now greeted the few who could still find it within themselves to enter the study of the grieving King; as the days bleared past from dawn until the light crawled over the horizon and abandoned the city to the night once more, the numbers of those who could still find the King beneath the veil of despair dwindled until only the loyalest remained. The ones who would stand by his side even as their leader crumbled under the weight of loss and rebuilt himself as a memorial to what he’d lost. 

The Shield closed the door silently and carefully stepped over the broken glass of an empty picture frame, approaching the desk. It was becoming dark in the room but he knew that trying the light switch would be fruitless; every morning, the bulb was replaced. Every night the King would shatter them again. 

Hiding himself beneath a blanket of darkness and spending sleepless nights scouring his mind for a way to right the sin he thought of as his own.

The grasp on the photograph in the hands of the monarch contrasted the subtle violence of the room around him, his steady fingertips brushing over the surface as though to feel for the warmth captured in the still image of a faded memory.

Clarus moves splintered wood from the ground where he kneels to offer whatever solidarity his King can take from him and from the new angle he can see the picture. He recognizes it instantly. It had long ago earned its place adorning the large desk, taking up a space directly in the centre and never being moved aside no matter how many reports stacked around it. 

The royal family had been invited to view the city gardens. A hundred professional photographers had captured every moment of the extremely appealing scene they had made; a King, regal and smiling as he was offered a bouquet of black roses with blue lavender mixed in. A Prince hiding shyly behind his legs with his cape clutched in his hands as a gardener bows to offer him a sprig of bow wrapped asters. 

At the very end of the shoot, he’d borrowed a camera from a stuttering photographer and quickly motioned for the King to follow him to a small pond. The surface had glistened as decorative fish swam beneath – Noctis, barely more than a week past six years old at the time, had instantly been entranced. 

Regis had knelt beside his son and smiled. A soft and genuine curve of the lips. Face warm with an affection that caught in his eyes like the reflections dancing on the surface. The boy looked at his father, excited and happy and reaching to grasp the King’s hand so he could share the joy he’d found in dipping his fingers in to swirl them around the fish. 

Clarus had snapped the picture. Regis said it was better than anything he’d seen published from that day. 

Seeing it now, being held reverently as though the King wished to sear the image into his mind and close his eyes to the world, hurt in a way that felt deeper than a fleeting emotion. 

“Regis.. you haven’t eaten again today.”

Regis didn’t respond.

He knew that ignoring his dear – and as the past few weeks had shown him, perhaps only – friend was pointless, but knowing that isolating himself like this was an act of self-destruction, and being able to bring himself to care were not the same to his addled mind any longer. Not since he had proven himself to be such a failure in the eyes of the world as they watched and filmed his every pitiful moment of grief, 

As a King, he’d been bested. As a leader, he’d proven incapable. 

As a father, he’d been unable to protect his child. 

The smiling face of his baby looking at him, the same doe eyes that had captured the hearts of father and citizens alike, and trying to reconcile that it was him that loving look was directed towards in the photo was impossible. He couldn’t recognize himself; that the man smiling beside the pool of water with his son held in his arms could be the same man he was now. That such a joyful moment had ever belonged to him. 

That he could have ever let the small hand which had guided his own, gripped his cape, reached for his, go. 

If he was ever given the chance, he would never let his baby go again. 

Gods, how he wanted to return to that day. 

 

The King felt his eyes beginning to damp and leaned back in his chair, placing the photo gently on his desk and straightening it carefully. His fingers never left it. 

Clarus followed the movement with his eyes as he remained kneeling, now placing a hand onto the knee of the King. “Hurting yourself won't help to bring Noctis back to us. You need to eat so you can continue to fight for him, Regis.” 

Regis took a slow, shallow breath, as though his chest were weighted with stones.

“I hadn’t thought of him much that day.” 

His voice was quiet and sombre. Heavy. Tinged with a dangerous cocktail of despair, regret and the guilt that he could not convince his King to disown. 

The King continued, now slowly stroking the face of his stolen child, so gently that the photograph stayed in place on the desk. “Since he’s been taken, my every thought has been of him. Every.. every action I take… “ Another shallow breath, another strained inhale, “reminds me that he is no longer within my grasp. And so I think of him now more than I ever. Even though… he wished for me before.. even though he may have felt this painful longing for me while he was still here..." 

He didn’t know whether to stop his King or allow him to continue, to get out this poisonous grief that was wreaking havoc within the heart and mind of his friend. He could see tears hanging unshed in his eyes as he continued, gazing at the photo as though it were a grave emblazoned with the name of his child rather than a picture of a Noctis smiling.

The room went silent before Regis began again.   
“When it rains, I think of him…” A pause. “I wonder if he is getting wet, if he is shivering from cold…"

The tears began to drip and Clarus watched in silence as he witnessed a pain that no man as good as Regis should be forced to feel. “When I try to sleep, I wonder if he is warm. If he is being hurt. Is he being allowed to sleep? Is someone.. is someone hurting him in that moment?”

Leaning over his desk for support, Regis’ voice was thick, his tears no longer withheld, because why? For who should he stay strong, if all his forces would not be enough to bring back his child? His only joy in this world, this world that would take until he was no more than a husk, his only love – his son who he had not protected. Who had been taken from him. Stolen from his bed where he should have been safest, where he could have been safe if Regis had only come home a little faster, had only been there a little sooner. 

If Regis had been there for him. 

“I cannot eat because I do not know if he is being allowed to eat too,” his voice rose with creeping hysteria, “and I wonder, is he calling for me in that moment? I do not know what he is feeling and I can no longer ask. As I sit here, powerless, is he calling for me to come and save him? Wondering why I am not coming for him, if I have forsaken him? If it is his fault..?”

As the grease thin layer of quiet shattered like glass around them the sobs broke free and Regis began to weep, shivering inhales the most movement Clarus had seen from him in days. His hair tipped messily over his hands where they gripped the edge of the desk, his forehead pressing hard as the once proud man sobbed with an unbearable pain. Clarus had never felt so pointless; how had he allowed his King to be hurt like this? To be torn to shreds from a blow that had no equal in the agony it could inflict? 

“We will find him, Regis – we will return him to his home, we will take him back from the thieves who stole him-”

Regis’ head lifted and his face was so weary in that moment that all answers misted and vanished from his mind. Clarus felt as though he was watching Regis age before him. His life draining with each moment that no progress was made to bring them closer to Noctis. 

“Why, Clarus? Why is my son destined to suffer so much? Why is his fate so cruel, though he ha only ever been innocent?” 

Clarus could feel his own defences falling and he gripped Regis by his shoulders and held on tight, feeling hands grasp his sleeves tightly. “The worst thing is,” Regis gasped against his ear, grinding out the words with painful effort, “that I cannot stand the alternative. I cannot stand that he may not be thinking of me, that he may not be wondering where I am, because I cannot possibly face the possibility that he could be.. that the monsters who I allowed to take him might have…!”

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually a segment from a full thing but I haven't finished it yet, and I'm worried I won't, so i wanted to post this....
> 
> eidolas has noctis and everything is sad!


End file.
